


Buenas Noches, Cielito

by ocellpetit



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: And feeling nostalgic, And homeless together tbh, Basically I just wanted a cute fic of Javier with you talking about life and being a couple, Cuddling & Snuggling, Fluff and Angst, It's not smutty or anything it's just y'all being cute together, Late Night Conversations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-11-04 19:30:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17904188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ocellpetit/pseuds/ocellpetit
Summary: You and Javier settle in for the night. Discussion about some of the other camp members, some guitar playing, and talk of the past and future together. Some mild fluff and angst, of course.





	Buenas Noches, Cielito

**Author's Note:**

> I just love Javi and wanted this. Please enjoy.

It’s a calm night at camp. You hear the crickets chirp and the occasional hoot of an owl. Some of the other gang members are talking in the distance, but you can’t make out what they’re saying. Dutch turned off his phonograph a long while ago. Not even the coyotes are out with their yipping and yapping tonight.

You’re sitting in your tent at your makeshift vanity, already changed into your nightgown. You’ve set the kerosene lamp beside you, and there’s another small candle on the other side of the tent placed on an upside-down crate. Together, they light up the space just enough for you to see yourself in the mirror. You brush your hair methodically, spending too much time to make sure each and every strand is detangled. It’s repetitive and brainless. There’s something stress relieving about it.

Behind you, the tent doors flap open. You turn around in your chair and see Javier enter. He’s holding his guitar in hand. He’d been playing it earlier that night. You love listening to him play. His melodic voice is almost hypnotic. He seems to be able to sing any note with ease. Whenever he sings the songs from his childhood, there’s a certain twinkle in his eyes. It’s as if for a moment, he’s transported back to simpler times.

This night, however, he had been playing by himself. It was the mindless sort of playing, strumming certain chords over and over. Maybe to him it was like how you brushed your hair. Therapeutic, in a sense.  

“Hola, corazón” he greets you. You love it when he speaks in Spanish, and he knows it. Maybe it’s a small thing, but you love it anyway. It makes you feel extra special.

“Buenas noches,” you respond. You also know that he loves it when you speak Spanish to him, even if you can’t say much. He says your accent is cute. “You’re turning in early for the night. You’re usually out there until two in the morning.”

“Yeah, I know,” Javier says, shrugging. “I figured it was time to call it a night once Bill and Sean got too drunk and started yelling.”

“Yelling at each other or just…yelling?”

“With those two, who knows?”

Javier puts the guitar back in its case, which he keeps right next to his sleeping mat. He started keeping it near him after an incident one night where Sean decided that he was an expert musician.  

“Speaking of drunks, I spent all day in town trying to get information,” you say. “You’d think the hard part is getting them to talk, but really, it’s getting them to shut up.”

Javier chuckles. “People love the sound of their own voices.”

You smirk. “And you don’t, serenading us every other night?”

“I never said I didn’t love mine, too,” Javier says, smiling. He walks behind you and puts his arms around you, kissing you on the cheek. “I wouldn’t mind hearing you sing.”

“Oh, you wouldn’t say that if you heard it!” You snort, but you feel yourself blush. If you sang for anybody, it would be him.

You glance over to his guitar and motion towards it. “Teach me how to play guitar.”

“Really, you want to learn?” Javier asks, raising an eyebrow. He plays it off casually, but you can sense his excitement. He loves that thing, and you're sure that he's thrilled at the opportunity to share his passion with somebody else genuinely interested.

“I do,” you say. “I’ve always wanted to play an instrument. I learned a little piano as a kid, but that was ages ago. I was never very good.”

“I’m sure you were fine.”

“Oh no, I was terrible.”

“Maybe you just had a terrible teacher.”

“It was my cousin.”

“Ah. Terrible piano, then?”

“Oh, no, don’t worry. I never liked that cousin very much.”

Javier laughs. “Well, whatever the case, guitar is better. I promise you that,” he says. He pats you on the shoulder and goes back to his guitar. He takes it back out of its case and brings it to you, placing it in gingerly your lap. You know that this is a big deal, because he loves this guitar like it’s his child.

“You remember the notes?” he asks. “A, B, C...?”

“I remember notes. And there’s major and minor keys, too.”

“See? You’re not terrible!” Javier says. “Well, for guitar, you usually you start with learning major chords. A, D, E, C, and G.”

As he speaks, he crouches behind you and moves your hands to the correct positions, making sure you're holding the instrument correctly. You feel his breath on your neck as he talks. It sends a shiver down your spine.

“Okay, so rest your right hand here so you can easily strum. As for your left hand…” He takes your fingers in his and gently adjusts them to be placed on the right strings. “If you put your three fingers here – yeah, like that – it makes the A chord.”

You strum the guitar. You aren’t sure if it was right, but it didn’t sound wrong. Javier smiles at you reassuringly. 

“Perfect!” he says. He gives you an encouraging squeeze on the shoulder. “Now let’s try for D.”

Again, he carefully takes your hand and moves it to the correct position. There’s no space between you two. You decide that the guitar really is the best instrument.

One by one, you go through all five chords. He’s very patient and doesn’t seem to mind at all when you mess up.

“You’re a natural!” he says, after you’ve gotten the hang of the major five. He kisses you again and you feel incredibly proud. “The next hardest part is smoothly switching between chords. But with some practice, it gets easier.”

“You’re a good teacher,” you say.

Javier smiles. “What can I say? You’re a good student.”

You continue to practice with the chords while Javier gets ready for bed. You watch him in the reflection of your vanity’s mirror as he changes into his night clothes. He takes such careful care with each piece of clothing. More than any other member of camp, you’re certain. It’s rather refined for somebody with no real home, but you like that about him. He proves that there’s dignity in all walks of life.

“Who taught you how to play guitar?” you ask.

Javier fumbles with one of his shirt buttons. It’s not exactly uncomfortable, but you can tell what you asked accidentally hit a sore spot.

“My uncle,” Javier answers. He pauses a moment and finishes taking off his shirt before saying more. "I always heard him play it as a kid, so I begged my mother to learn. It's not like we could afford a professional teacher or anything, so she got my uncle to teach me. He was busy with work and his own kids, but he always made some time out of his week for it."

"He sounds like a great guy," you say.

"He was," Javier says. 

You're quiet a moment and turn your attention back to the guitar. Your fingers are starting to cramp up, which only makes you respect musicians more. 

“How do you say guitar in Spanish?” you ask, slowly strumming the same chord on repeat. You look in the mirror at Javier again. You don’t hide the fact that you’re staring at his bare chest in the mirror. He doesn’t seem to mind.

“Guitarra,” he translates. You repeat it, and he grins, clearly amused. “Yeah, but you have to roll the r’s.”

“Give me time to practice on that,” you say lightheartedly. You stop playing the guitar and stand up. You walk across the tent to put it back in its case. Javier watches you. “How’d you learn English so well, anyway?”

“Oh, English is hell. I still hate reading in it,” Javier says. “But I had to learn. Not saying it was easy but eh, that’s survival, you know?”

“I do know survival.”

Javier makes some sort of humming sound in acknowledgement. Survival, as opposed to thriving, is something that you both know too well.

Javier puts on his white night shirt and lets his hair down from its ponytail. It’s such a stark contrast to his daytime attire, though it fits his personality. Casual, relaxed, unperturbed.

“I like you like that,” you comment.

“What?”

“You know, all loosen up,” you say, motion towards his outfit.

Javier scoffs, but you see him smile anyway. “You’re starting to sound like Sean.”

You laugh. “I heard about your little scuffle with him, by the way.”

Javier rolls his eyes. “The guy doesn’t know how to keep quiet for more than two seconds.”

You turn off kerosene lamp. The only light remaining is the dimming candle on the crate beside Javier. You usually let that one go out on its own.

You settle down in your bed for the night. Javier lies down next to you. There’s nothing stylish or sophisticated about it. You’re both on the ground, one thin mattress and some blankets away from laying in the dirt. But you smile. Sure, a real bed would be nice, but having Javier there makes being homeless a little better. You’re both there for each other when you just need someone’s presence. Maybe it means something, maybe it doesn’t. But as outlaws with no real place to go, that’s good enough.

…then again, you can’t help but hope that it does mean something.

“When do you think we’ll finally settle?” you ask. You’re looking at the candle, slowly getting dimmer as the wax around the wick melts. “Have a real bed and an actual lamp?”

“No idea,” Javier says. “Hopefully soon. Dutch says he has a plan.”

“Right…” you say, not entirely convinced. You see Javier frown beside you, though he doesn’t comment on your skepticism. It’s a discussion that you’ve had before, and neither of you really feel like having it again. “It’s hard to even imagine being in one place longer than a couple of months now.”

Javier changes the direction of the conversation slightly. “And where would you want to stay, if you could settle anywhere?”

“I don’t know if it’s really the place that matters, or if it’s just the people,” you answer. _And by people, I mean you._ This is sappy and you know it, so you keep that last part to yourself.

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” Javier says. His stretches his arms and crosses them behind his bed, making a slight moaning sound as he does so. “The option to stay in one place would be nice. I don’t really care where.”

 “Exactly. I don’t need anything fancy,” you say.  “I’m not looking to be the next Braithewaite.”

“Hell, no. You know, those bastards remind me of the people who ran things in my hometown. They think they own everybody because they’re rich, but they’re no better than anybody else,” Javier agrees. These things always rile him up a bit. Fighting inequality is something he cares about a lot, and you respect that. “I’m not in this to be rich. I’m in this for my freedom. We need money to live, not to be better than everyone.”

“Sure, I think most of us can agree on that. With few exceptions,” you say. You can't help but think of Micah, but you push that rat out of your mind. “I don’t even know what I’d do with all that money.”

“Invest in a pointless feud against another rich family,” Javier jokes. "It's all the rage, apparently."

“Oh, of course,” you say. “Actually, though, I think I’d invest in a really nice kitchen and then buy all the best food in the world.”

Javier seems amused. “Is that a jab towards Pearson?”

“No, his food’s fine. But you know perfectly well that camp food is…well, it’s not the crème de la crème,” you say. “Pearson does great, given what we have.”

Javier laughs. “You don’t have to explain it to me. It took me awhile to get used to the food here in general.”

“Is it really different than Mexican food?”

“Yeah. It’s blander,” Javier says. “I’m not saying it’s bad, and I know I haven’t had everything. But in general, it is.”

You nod. “Well, you’ll have to cook me some Mexican food sometime.”

Javier shakes his head. “I never said _I_ could cook. I wasn’t even allowed in the kitchen growing up.”

“I feel like there’s a story behind that.”

Javier grins. He shifts his position so that he’s laying on his side, facing you. The dim light from the candle illuminates his face just enough for you to see the twinkle in his eye as he’s about to tell his story.

“When I was a kid, my mom threw a huge party. She’d invited the entire extended family and probably half of the town. We didn’t have that much money, so it was a big deal. She’d spent a lot of money and time preparing the food for it,” Javier said. “But I was a crazy kid, and she knew it.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt that,” you say, chuckling. It’s fun to imagine what Javier as a child must have been like.

“Yeah, she told me to not to go near that kitchen until after the party was done. So of course, while she was busy cleaning the rest of the house, I snuck into the kitchen to have some of the food. I tried some of everything, picking it all off the plates with my hands. And then there was this cat.”

“A cat?”

“Yeah, I don’t know whose cat. I don’t think he belonged to anyone, but he always came to my house because I always fed him. My father _hated_ him, so I liked him on principal. Or maybe her. I don’t really know what the cat was. Wouldn’t let me touch it,” Javier says. He gives a small shrug. “Anyway, the kitchen window was open and the cat was sitting there. I decided to coax it inside with some of the food.

“The cat came in and you could tell that it was thinking that it hit the jackpot, in a cat way,” Javier continues. “I was standing by the window, and it was kind of scared of people, so it stepped across all the food to get to the other end of the counter and start there. Again, I was a kid, so a cat stepping over all the dishes didn’t really matter to me.

“That’s when my mom came in the kitchen. You could see the shock in her face when she saw the cat and I gorging on all the food. The cat was terrified though, and it ran back to the window as fast as it could. Of course in the process, it knocked down a lot of the dishes. And being the stupid kid I was, I tried to catch the cat and make it stay. I managed to knock down the rest. The food went everywhere and I remember a lot of the pots shattering. Hours of work and more money than I’d like to imagine, all over me and the floor.”

“Your mother must have been thrilled.”

“Oh, she was. I got it bad _!,_ let me tell you! Trust me, I loved my mother, but she was _tough_. She didn’t hesitate to put me in your place,” Javier said. He laughs a little. “I was half convinced she was going to kill me that day. I was essentially banned from the kitchen for life after that.”

“Your first time as an outlaw.”

“Ha. Guess so,” Javier says. “Ah, but she eventually got over it. She’d even bring it up as a joke later. Maybe that’s why I’ve never forgotten about it. She wouldn't let me!"

“And the cat?” you ask. You can’t help yourself.

Javier laughs. “The cat was fine! Continued to visit. My mom always made sure the kitchen window was closed after that, but I saw her leave some food for it outside the back of the house sometimes. She had a soft spot for it.”

As he speaks, you see his eyes light up. Usually when he speaks about his childhood, it’s something grim. However, whenever he speaks about his mother, there’s always a fondness to it. Of course, him speaking about her is a rarity. Even the good parts of his childhood come with a bit of pain, because those good feelings are left in his childhood forever. His past is dark and tragic, but he always thinks about it with a hint of yearning nostalgia. It seems contradictory, but you understand. He loves Mexico, and that’s why the injustice hurts him so much.  

“You must miss Mexico a lot,” you say.

“I do,” he says. “Don’t you miss your hometown?”

“Sometimes,” you say. “There’s things I miss and things I don’t.”

“Of course,” Javier says. “I don’t miss the heat. I could get real hot there. On a summer day, it could be unbearable.”

“Well, I’d take that compared to that blizzard on the mountains we had to go through,” you say, smirking slightly.

Javier smiles. “Good point.”

While he wasn’t one to complain, Javier made it no secret that he hadn’t loved the snow. You couldn’t blame him.

“Well, in a lot of ways, it’s not so different here. People are people everywhere, for better or worse. Usually worse, in my experience,” Javier says. You frown, but don’t say anything. None of you are in the gang from a past of good experiences, after all. “There’s still something different, though. I don’t know how to explain it. So many people may be corrupt in both places, but there’s a sense of community between the people in Mexico. Here the culture is a little more individualistic. I’m not entirely sure what to make of it sometimes.”

“Is that not what this is?” you ask, referring to the gang. “Individualism.”

“Nah, we’re like a family here. We’re loyal to each other,” Javier explains. “It’s us versus the big guys, you know?”

“Well, I hope we’re not too much like family, because that would make this a little weird,” you say playfully, kissing him on the cheek. Grinning, he puts his arm around your waist and pulls you closer. He kisses you again, but this time on the lips with a little more passion. You happily accept and run your fingers through his hair as you kiss back.

You pull away and relax your head by his chest. You’re on your back but he’s still on his side, arm held protectively around you. You listen to his heartbeat, a little fast after that. The candle slowly goes out, leaving you in darkness.

His eyes are closed and he’s starting to doze off, but your mind is still thinking about your conversation. If Javier had the chance to ever go back to Mexico, surely he would. And what would that mean for you two?

“Do you still consider Nuevo Paraíso your home?” you suddenly ask. You speak quietly, and a bit tentatively. “Or is it just something of the past?”

Javier’s doesn't speak for a moment. You can’t tell if he’s asleep, trying to think of an answer, or if he doesn’t want to talk about it. You wonder if you should just drop the topic.

But he does answer you.

“It’ll always be my home, but…well, you know I can’t go back. Not until there’s a revolution, and I doubt that will happen anytime soon,” he says. He takes your hand into his. “So, this is my home for now.”

Your heart aches for him. You squeeze his hand and he squeezes it back. Still, despite the seriousness of the conversation, you can’t help but enjoy his proximity. It’s warm and comforting.

“If, well, _when_ you do go back—” you say, deciding to try to be optimistic about his return even if you’re slightly dreading it, “—do you plan to go alone?”

Javier is silent again for a moment. Again, you can’t tell if it’s good or bad.  

“I don’t know. You tell me.”

“You don’t have to go alone if you don’t want you.”

“Then I don’t want to.”

You can’t help but smile a bit. Maybe this relationship does mean more than a distraction.

“You really think I’d just leave?” he murmurs.

“Just making sure,” you say back, closing your eyes and finally allowing yourself to relax. “Well, goodnight, Javi. I mean, buenas noches.”

You hear him chuckle quietly. “Buenas noches, cielito.”

You rest your head on his chest and slowly fall asleep. 


End file.
